


Surmounting the Ice

by Mathais



Series: Through the Ice We Grow [1]
Category: Persona Series, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-30 00:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mathais/pseuds/Mathais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Though primordial ice seeps into his town, Jamie pushes past his exhaustion and leads his friends forward with the power of Persona.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surmounting the Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and elements of either Rise of the Guardians or the Persona series.
> 
> Notes: I really, really don't know where this came from. It just wouldn't stop bugging me.

Jamie closed his eyes and breathed in deep.  The light around his arm faded, and along with it, the pain of broken bone.  When he opened his eyes again, Sophie's worried face hovered near his. "Are you all right now, Jamie?"

"I'm good," he said, pasting on a small grin. "Your Diarama is getting better."

"I wonder if there's a stronger spell," his little sister pondered before shaking her head. "I need to work on Cupcake."

"Drag Claude with you," Jamie ordered. "I pretty sure he still knows Dia."

"Got it!" Sophie said and waved as she trotted off.

Jamie leaned back with a sigh and rested his staff on his legs.  His aching back met the cold stone wall behind him, and though he knew he would have to move eventually, he could rest for now.  A healing spell might knit together his broken body, but it did nothing for the exhaustion which crept bone-deep.

He was getting tired.  His whole team was getting tired.  Drained of that energy that fueled their powers, yes, but also tired of the constant fighting.

He still didn't know if their current situation was the fault of the game they'd played, that word, "Persona," falling from their lips with innocent pleasure so rare for teens (and one child) like them—or if it was the game that gave them the only fighting chance in this nightmare.

All he knew was that as soon as the game ended and the man in the butterfly mask greeted them, the world changed.

It was like Pitch all over again, except so much worse.  Fear saturated their small town of Burgess, but not in the same way as Pitch had once done to the world.

By day, the town was almost normal.  By day, its residents could almost fool themselves that nothing was wrong.

But by night, by night—it was an entirely different story.  Blinding snow and unrelenting winds trapped all within their homes.  And if one could even brave the bitter cold, the stalkers of the night, demons and Shadows who struck the unwary, had all of the residents hiding in the safety of their homes and praying for dawn.

There had been deaths that first night, he knew.  Jamie and his sister—heck, all of his friends—would have been among them too, if not for the mysterious power the man in the butterfly mask had bestowed upon them.

Persona.

The mask one wore to face the world.  A portion of the soul free to express itself in the world.

Jamie remembered a dark horse that brought all his worst memories of Nightmares to the fore.  That Shadow loomed over Sophie, and all Jamie could think was _no_.

Cold fire burst in his chest as a defiant but squeaky voice whispered, "I am thou... and thou art I," and a card appeared at the edges of his fingers.  With a solid clench, it shattered like glass between his fingers.

Ice spewed forth from a small, white figure dressed in blue, whose name he knew.

"Jack Frost," he whispered.

"From the sea of your soul, I come, hee," the spirit—his _Persona_ —said.  He didn't hear those words with his ears, but, rather, with his heart.  For a moment, Jamie gazed on his Persona, imagining what Jack's reaction would be upon seeing it.

("That's supposed to be _me_?" he would say, all mock-offended.)

Unfortunately, pausing was a bad choice to make, considering his ice spell did little more than annoy the horse, which turned its glowing yellow eyes toward him.  Jamie tried to muffle a scream as the horse's powerful head rammed into him, but he was pretty sure he failed.

In the haze of pain, he heard Sophie yell his name, and then he heard the same cracking sound as before.  Light filled him, and though he still felt bruised, he could stand, and he watched as a rabbit faded away from in front of his little sister.

Honestly, Jamie didn't quite know how he and Sophie survived as long as they did.  It was all a continuous stream of adrenaline and flinging ice spells as Sophie did her best to heal him.

It was one of the basic laws of thermodynamics that energy had to come from somewhere, and Jamie felt that truth keenly every time he fired off a new spell, hoping every time that _this_ one would be the end, and every time Sophie's healing came just a little later and a little weaker than before.  He felt like he was draining his soul dry as he began to pull out another blast of ice, but between one breath and the next, the dark horse was upon him once more, stealing that breath away with a charge.  Jamie thought he felt his ribs crack as he slammed into the icy streets.  Frigid fear brought a sudden clarity, and Jamie watched as the horse raised its front hooves for a final blow...

...only for a familiar red figure—not the same form that Jamie had met so long ago, but still recognizable in this far more ubiquitous incarnation—brought his sword down and vanquished the Shadow.

Sophie was on him in the next beat of time, the same bunny appearing again to cast a healing spell on him, just as Cupcake of all people trotted over to him.

"Thanks for the save," he said.

The corner of Cupcake's mouth rose in response. "Glad I made it in time."

Jamie barely remembered the journey back, the three of them clustered together and hoping beyond hope that nothing else attacked them.

Jamie found out later that they weren't the only ones who were attacked, but they were of the few who escaped with their lives.

The seven of them who'd participated in the Persona game had been the _only ones_ who survived an attack.

The adults found the bodies the next morning, either mauled by claws or trampled by hooves.

And it was with that cold realization that only the seven of them, blessed with the power of Persona, could safely traverse both day and night.  Able to shake off the fear and _despair_ which encircled the town and capable of braving the dangerous streets at night—no one wanted to voice it, but all of them had dark thoughts hidden within them.

Were they to blame for this, this slow destruction in ice?

And so they searched.

At night, they snuck out into the ice and snow to find frozen structures that would fade at dawn.  Their interiors changed with each new night, and they were filled to the brim with strong demons and Shadows, but at their highest heights, they held giants of frost, who guarded icy shards that they claimed as spoils.  Though they still didn't know their purpose, and the residents of the Velvet Room, that mystical place where they upgraded their Personas with servants of the man with the butterfly mask, remained mum when they asked, they all knew that those shards were the key to something.

Jamie was tired though.  Tired of the fighting, and tired of the quiet despair that was the result of the icy fear.

Tired of leading his group of friends and his sister into danger again and again, with nothing but a steadily worsening situation to show for it.

Jamie wanted...  He wanted the same protection he had felt when he was younger.  He wanted his best friend by his side, frost on the windows, and reassuringly cold arms wrapping him in a hug.

But he'd seen neither hide nor hair of him since this ordeal began.  There'd been no sand singing through the air to draw people into dreamful slumber.  And when Sophie lost a tooth after a blow that had Jamie scrambling for and blessing those wonderful, beautiful, miraculous, _healing_ beads they'd found, his little sister had stashed it under her pillow that night rather than heal it back into her mouth, all with a desperate hope.

If Jamie hadn't spent so long fiercely believing, he might have lost faith when Sophie moved her pillow to find the tooth still resting there the next morning.

Sometimes, Jamie just summoned his Persona.  This Jack Frost wasn't the same Jack Frost that he knew—shaped and acted totally different—but if he closed his eyes, he had the same icy coolness, and some of the same feeling of protection he felt with Jack passed through him.

He would do that now, if he didn't need his energy to continue onward to the next floor.

But he was so tired...

 _"Would you be proud of me?"_ Jamie wondered. _"I'm doing my best."_

"Jamie," broke in Monty's voice. "There's three Shadows heading for our location.  Claude and Caleb are intercepting them, but they'll need backup."

The voice didn't come through Jamie's ears but instead traveled directly to his head.  At first, it weirded Jamie out, but now he didn't know how he could fight or lead as well as he did without Monty's solid voice in his head rattling off statistics and weaknesses.

Jamie got to his feet and picked up his staff, a trophy from one of the icy structures they already searched.  Fighting through the lethargy weighing him down, he hustled over to the battle, where the silver glow of Monty's Persona could be seen.  Monty didn't have a combat Persona, but Jamie had yet to see an attack which could penetrate its protections, and its analytical capabilities were invaluable.

The twins were tag-teaming one of the two remaining Shadows just as Jamie arrived, using their combination where Claude, whose Persona specialized in status spells, threw a handful of sleeping dust onto a rampaging foe and Caleb, who had abilities to capitalized on weakened enemies, finished it off.  At this moment, a dark figure made of shadows materialized above Caleb's head, wreathing Caleb's scythe in dark sand to defeat their sleeping target.

Jamie announced his presence with one of his favorite spells, Atomic Bufula.  Ice impaled the last Shadow from below, freezing it solid in time for Claude to cast out his whip and smash it to pieces.

"Jamie," Claude called with a cheeky grin and coiled his whip back into a rest position. "I had this!"

Monty tsked as the semi-transparent moon surrounding him faded. "You were supposed to be helping Sophie with healing duties."

"She's got Cupcake under control," Claude dismissed with a shrug. "My Dia doesn't have anything on what she can come up with, and you know Pippa's Dia is better."

"Don't piss off our healer," Caleb told his twin. "She learned Agilao recently.  You don't want to be caught in a case of friendly fire, do you?"

"Eheheheh..." Claude laughed awkwardly before drooping. "I'll go help."

"Let's _all_ head back," Jamie stressed. "The room we're using as base right now isn't too defensible." The suggestion was met with agreement, and all four of them turned to go back to their base.

As they walked, Jamie asked Monty, "How close are we to the next floor?"

"We should be at the stairs soon.  Are we going any deeper tonight?"

"I... don't know..." Jamie paused, every bit of exhaustion hitting him once more. "Everyone's getting tired, right?"

"The team's a bit low," Monty said after a moment. "I should—" And then Monty froze, the light of his Persona instantly surrounding him. "The others are in trouble!  Hurry!"

The three other boys locked gaze for a moment before rushing forward through the icy corridors, Monty trailing behind them as he rattled off advice in a battle only he could sense.  For just a brief moment, panic overrode the tiredness that dogged Jamie's steps.

By the time they got back, it looked it was well in hand, though only because Pippa used a Mahama.  Jamie could see the faded remnants of the unreliable light spell wiping out some of their enemies outright as they entered the room, with a green fairy fading from sight above Pippa's head.

Jamie breathed a sigh of relief as he took in the three remaining members of his team, more or less unharmed.  Cupcake and her Persona trisected a demon with their swords, and Sophie's boomerang, burning with fire magic from her bunny Persona, sliced through another one.  He swept in to block a hit aimed for Pippa's back with his staff, and she smiled back in thanks, twirling her knives once before rushing back into the fray, a Sukukaja spell increasing her speed.

Jamie summoned the winds to him with his Persona's help, blasting one final demon into Caleb's waiting slice.

"Are you three all right?" Jamie asked once everyone caught their breaths.

"We're good, Jamie," Sophie said, which Monty confirmed in a quiet voice in his head.

He rapped the butt of his staff against the ground, catching everyone's attention. "Monty says that we should be at the stairs soon.  Should we continue on or head back?"

"Onward, of course," came from Cupcake.  No surprise there; Cupcake had always been gung-ho about progressing into these icy structures.

"I still have enough energy," Sophie said, a ringing endorsement from their main healer.

Claude gave an expected thumbs up. "I'm game if you are." He matched Cupcake in sheer enthusiasm when it came to their trips as well.

Pippa's response actually surprised Jamie. "I think we can continue," she said.  She had always been one of the most reluctant to fight and was the last of them to make journeying for a solution her goal.

"I believe that everyone is at a decent strength," Monty said, ever-mindful of everyone's state. "We have the reserves to continue, should it be necessary."

Jamie turned to the final member of their group.  Caleb was the most cautious out of all of them, so it was actually a deep shock to hear him say, "Let's head to the next floor."

Looking at all of his friends, at the sheer determination that lit up their faces, Jamie felt his exhaustion recede just a little.  If his friends thought they could make it, Jamie could do no less than match them.

Shaking himself out of his funk, Jamie took a deep breath and then smiled. "Okay then, onward!" he directed, pointing with the tip of his staff.

And if his step was a little lighter, only Jamie knew.

 _"If you could see me now,"_ Jamie thought, surrounded by his friends as they braved the ice, _"you'd be proud of me, right?"_

For some reason, Jamie felt like he knew the answer.


End file.
